Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Having a web site is of little use if your potential customers cannot find it. Many new customers find products and sites by using a search engine such as Google. Designing a site so that it will be ranked higher in search results is called Search Engine Optimization (SEO.) ShopSite is SEO Friendly because it has many features that enable your site and product pages to be optimized for higher search engine rankings.

Static Pages

Perhaps the most important feature for SEO is static pages. These are regular web pages that end in .html or htm as opposed to dynamic pages that end in .asp, .pl. Static pages can easily be indexed by a Search Engine and display faster for your shoppers.

Pages and Product Names

ShopSite gives you freedom in naming your products and pages. A page that is named “HP-Toner-Cartridges.html” is more likely to be found and produce a higher search result ranking than a page that is dynamically generated and called something like “page123-a.asp”

Image Alt Tags

Naming your images after the product they represent is also an important SEO feature. Similarly, having descriptive information displayed in what is called the “Alt” tag can help with SEO. Text contained in the "Alt" tag is displayed when a shoppers mouse is over an image. The "Alt" tag is customizable in ShopSite by just filling in a text box.

Meta Tags

Meta Keywords and Descriptions are fields that users do not see on a web page but that provide search engines information about a page. By filling in a text box you can tell a search engine the keywords that are relevant to a products detail (More Info) page as well as give a description that would show in search results. The contents of a title tag are also displayed in the title bar of many browsers and setting this tag is considered one of the best SEO practices. ShopSite allows merchants to easily set title tag contents.

Site Map

A "Site Map" is an HTML equivalent of a "table of contents" for a site. A "Sitemap" is a file in HTML or XML format used to provide information about pages on a site to search engines such as Google, Yahoo, and MSN. ShopSite can automatically create an XML sitemap including information about any ShopSite generated pages, including Store Pages and product More Information Pages.

Google Product Search

ShopSite also make it easy to submit your products for listing in Google Base’s Product Search (formerly Froogle.) With just a couple of clicks you can have all your products submitted to Google.